Daily Archives: February 14, 2010

Background: today is cleaning day at Chez Chili (it was supposed to be yesterday, but other things took precedence). I’ve been downstairs resetting and picking up and folding and reorganizing and washing. The girls were asked to clean their room, change their sheets, and vacuum.

As I’m making banana bread muffins, I call up and ask the girls if they’ll extend the vacuuming to include the entire upstairs (which consists of a bathroom, a hallway, a small office, and my room). Punkin’ (“Little Punk” at the moment) comes to the top of the stairs and informs me that the bathroom, hallway, and office were vacuumed. When I asked if she’d vacuum my room, I got:

“Why?”

For the full effect, hear this in your mind’s ear as a drawn out sneer. So much the better if you imagine the little git girl saying with her hands on her hips.

I said “never mind” and left it at that.

Here’s what I WANTED to say:

How about because you’re vacuuming up there anyway and it’ll take you three minutes to drag the thing around my room, and that’s IF you do a super-thorough job of it? How about because you had a sleepover last night after we TOLD you there would be no more sleepovers until your grades came up, and you might want to be especially nice to us for letting you get away with that? How about because I’ve been down here cleaning up a lot of YOUR crap for the last two hours, and your putting in at least the illusion of a little effort to maintain the house you live in might be appreciated by the people who actually DO the work? How about because I’m down here making sweeties for you guys for breakfast next week – if I can do something nice for you, how about a little reciprocity? How about because I asked nicely and, really, I don’t ask much. How about not fighting with me about every fucking thing I ask you to do and offering up the tiniest bit of cooperation? How about just because? Well… how ABOUT it?!

I wanted to say that, but I didn’t, because I’m the grown-up. Sometimes, I hate being the grown-up.

Does it seem sad to anyone else that we need to set aside a day to tell people we love them? Valentine’s Day – for me, anyway – is entirely superfluous. I love my people every day, all the time; I don’t need the Marketing Machine to remind me to appreciate the people who matter.